


the return (Obi-Wan Kenobi)

by thespareoom



Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Post-Order 66
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:20:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26201782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thespareoom/pseuds/thespareoom
Summary: a year after the rise of the Empire, Obi-Wan reemerges and takes you home
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi/Reader
Comments: 3
Kudos: 36





	the return (Obi-Wan Kenobi)

He reappeared much in the same way he left, without a trace, barely a whisper in the wind. A year had passed since the world had fallen apart, collapsed in on itself without warning. One day the war raged, and the next, quiet cloaked the galaxy. But there was no peace.  
Three years had disappeared into history since you walked away, serving the tie that held you to him, a fool-hearted effort to save yourself from love. A lifetime ago, the break should have removed the man from your heart, but he lingered just the same, buried deeper than you could safely excise and hope to survive. Your nights remained separate, words left choked down, unsaid, but he remained tethered to you in unexpected ways, perpetually in your universe, orbits never intersecting.   
His return came like it often did in the time before, signaled by a little piece of him left behind where he knew you’d see. The same soft brown pouch he’d always used, hastily sewn together from a torn off corner of a cloak long ago. This time, containing a sandstone, rough and still warm from the sun nestled inside. Before, he often left behind little stones from the planet he had been sent to or a sun-dried leaf from a native plant. Once, he left a bit of mangled metal from his ship, ripped off after a forced crash landing that absolutely was not his fault, of course. That token lived on your dresser for many years, if for no other reason than to provide an easy opening to tease him. How he snuck into your office, your senatorial box, random meeting rooms, time and time again, completely undetected and unnoticed, you never knew. But whenever the tiny pocket appeared, worn around the edges from years of being held in his hands and yours, he would be waiting in your quarters when you returned that evening, peering out at the city below.   
A sterile chill hangs over your office these days, in the time of the Empire, so sharply contrasted to the warm nights you spent with Obi-Wan. Bustling negotiations, lunch meetings with friends, long hours poring over legislation with aides, all relics of a previous time. Now, in the after, once the dust had settled and the bricks of freedom finished crashing down, all that remained was absolute power. The power of one. That single opinion alone mattered, and working for any alternative always proved fruitless. Most had long since stopped trying. In the early days, in the weeks after the fall of the Republic, many of your colleagues attempted to continue on as before, working as if nothing had changed. But that was a lie you all told yourself long after you knew it was false. The Senate existed now only as an illusion, a means to consolidate power, to control rather than represent.   
The dissonance of this world and the one where this tiny bag last appeared in your life is so deep, it forces the air out of your chest. You stare down at the soft fabric for a long time in the low light, trying to parse the consequences of its reappearance in your life. The unlikelihood that it holds the same meaning, serves the same purpose as it once did. But you can’t not go, can’t risk not seeing him, improbable though it may be that he’s there, waiting.  
And so you race back, clinging to the impossible chance that he might be waiting for you. He’s gone, you tell yourself over and over again, preparing yourself for the moment when your room is once again filled with nothing but emptiness, cold and harsh, devoid of his warmth. He’s not here anymore, he can’t come back, he won’t be waiting.   
But then, there he is. Looking out the windows into the city, like hundreds of times before, but different now, because what in this galaxy hasn’t changed. Before, Obi-Wan was always composed, put together, clean and crisp. Everything about him looks disheveled now, like he’s out of place in his own skin. His robes, normally pressed and clean without fail, sit off-center on his shoulders, wrinkled and covered in dirt, singe marks dotting his back. Questions flood into your mind, how he got here, how he ended up in this tattered state, why he came back.  
All questions for later.  
But for now, he’s here, alive and vibrant and whole, a moment you never dreamed you could hold in your hands. You drink in the sight of him, leaning to one side, lost in thought.  
He senses you long before he turns to face you, you can only assume. But you both hold off for a moment longer, unwilling to step forward, towards each other, into the uncertainty of the future.  
When Chancellor Palpatine, Emperor Palpatine, announced the end of the Jedi, their annihilation, you believed him. What choice did you have? The Order disappeared, there was no denying that. And Obi-Wan, his life vanished into the lies like everything else you had once believed about the Republic you served. A flawed establishment it had been, a broken democracy to be certain, but once the government you served held goodness, hope.   
The institution you once believed in had crumbled, and those within it whom you loved had vanished as well. Riyo returned to her home planet to assist her people. Bail retired to raise his daughter. The gods stole Padme without warning, just another tally in the long list of those who had been lost. Yet still you remained. Change always held the possibility of more destruction, so you stayed stuck, unwilling to leave the place where your life once held so much meaning.   
You stare across the room at Obi-Wan, reeling from all the ways the galaxy has broken since you last stood in this room together. You couldn’t remember a time when good news had come across your path. But this, his return, held the potential of blossoming hope and a life fulfilled, whole once more. And so you decide, at last, to take the chance.  
You push a shaky breath out and close the time and the distance separating Obi-Wan from you. Part of you expects him to be cold, unliving, an illusion rather than the real living man who stands before you. Somehow that feels more plausible than the likelihood that the great general survived the fall of the Order and returned to your side. But his body radiates warmth, like it always has, and something about the smell of him, sandalwood and sage and home, makes your knees wobble and start to falter beneath you. He senses your unsteadiness and turns towards you at last, hands placed under each of your elbows, holding you steady, and you hold back your surprise when his fingers don’t slip straight through you.   
His cheeks are wet, but his eyes are bright and a smile tugs at the corners of his lips. He doesn’t tell you what happened to him in the aftermath, doesn’t tell you what he’s seen and what he’s lost. All of these things will come later.  
“I live on Tatooine,” is all he says now. “Come home with me.”  
He’s nervous, that time will once again be the thief of joy, and he keeps talking long after you start nodding your head. He’s apologizing for all the years in the past when he asked too much, gave too little, left too often, a million things that were never his fault. He makes promises now that he never could then, that he will always be there, that he will never leave again. He tells you of every moment he wished he could have shared with you that he can give to you now. You place your fingers against his lips to stop his ceaseless ramble.  
“Obi, my love, yes. I will come with you,” you whisper. “You have always been my home.”  
And then comes relief. He steps forward to wrap himself around you, and then, for the first time, the words appear from his lips, the breath that surrounds them tickling the edge of your ear.  
“I love you.”  
It seeps into your skin, the warmth of his affection, proclaimed aloud after all this time. To put words to this feeling, this love, was never an exercise he entertained before. Love was a vow he could never hope to keep, a confession of compromised values already taken too far. But there is freedom now, in the after. Even with all the rest that’s been lost, there emerges a liberty to simply be.  
He stays with you that night, tangled up in your space, fitting yourselves back together as if you’d never been apart. His hands trace patterns, press love into your skin, into your bones, and you swear he will never be alone again.  
He returns home again the next day, but this time the separation doesn’t tear holes in your heart because this time, you are unbound from the constraints that once held you apart. This time you will follow him.  
* * * * *  
The ship touches gently down into the grains, and all that exists in every direction is emptiness. Vast and endless. A person could get lost here. You hope.  
The sand reaches every inch, down into your shoes, whipping into your hair, as you trek slowly through the small village.   
And there he stands, gazing out at the dunes, hair tousled in the wind. The sun kisses his skin, bouncing off the high points on his cheeks, bringing life and youth back into his weathered face. With his shape silhouetted against the brilliant blue sky, he looks almost ethereal, a vision from a dream you’ve memorized time and time again. You stand back, absorbing every possible detail of the way he looks at this moment, knowing every second after will be irreversibly different. The way the evening light pulls out every glint of red and bronze in his disheveled hair. The sand, his cloak, billowing in the wind, swirling around him as if shielding him from the world. The ease with which he stands, tension rolling off his shoulders rather than piled up on top of him.  
You take one step forward, then another, towards him, towards life anew. Your fingers stretch towards him, splitting the space between you, tearing the time that held you apart when you reach him at last. He sinks into your touch for a second, melting in the bright light, before turning to face you, his hands immediately reaching either side of your face.  
“I love you,” the first words from his mouth, tumbling out, flowing from him like a rushing wave he is powerless to stop. His thumbs brush across your cheeks, his eyes sparkling. Despite it all, all that you’d lost, all that had been stolen from him, there’s joy in those eyes, for this moment.  
He steps forward to press his lips into your forehead, and the words spill out again.  
“I love you.” For every time he’s held them in over the years, bit his tongue for the sake of his duty, his honor, his heart, he allows the words to fill the space between you, falling freely from his tongue without hesitation. I love you. He breathes you in and breathes love out again and again and again.   
Your hands grip him, winding into the folded fabric of his robe, praying he doesn’t slip through your fingers and disappear again. The melody of his voice fills your ears, notes caressing you like a warm embrace. A former version of yourself would have rushed through this moment in a desperate effort to consume more of him. But here, time had no meaning. It stood still and stretched on forever. This time, there would be no end to him, no moment of separation or departure for either of you.   
The suns set lower. He slides an arm across your shoulders, you loop one around his waist. That’s how you remain, watching the light slowly turn from golden to red to purple and disappear. When the stars emerge, twinkling their bright greeting from above, he takes your hand in his and tugs you gently towards his home. The home you now share. He glances back as you walk the short distance, tossing a smile your way that worms its way around your heart.   
He insists on cooking you dinner, for your first night in your new home. He burns half the food, but he makes it with love and a smile plastered on his face, so you don’t mind. He chats about nothing while he works, telling you about his neighbors and the shops they run, the places he’s going to take you in the coming weeks. For a place that has so little, he’s found so much to see joy in.   
The night grows darker, you curl up in bed, and he tells you about the other things, the things he’s left unsaid. He confesses to the blackness all the pain he’s held inside, all the grief he’s refused to feel. His tears fall onto your skin as he talks, slipping out quietly as if trying not to intrude upon his reflections.  
The morning comes, but there’s no fear in the rising sun now. The light won’t tear him away anymore. Instead, it softly announces the beginning of something new, growth, life starting again.


End file.
